Israel Wouldn’t Benefit from Attacking Iran

Bill Kristol’s call for an Israeli attack on Iran is as bad as you’d expect, but it’s worth discussing briefly to remember a few important points. Kristol writes:

As Iran moves closer to nuclear weapons, undeterred by the West’s leading power, a 21st-century tragedy threatens to unfold. Unless. Unless a dramatis persona who didn’t exist in 1936 intervenes: Israel. Ariel Sharon once famously said that Israel would not play the role of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Nor will it play the role of Poland. Despite imprecations from the Obama administration, Israel will act. One prays it will not be too late.

Comparisons between Iran and 1930s Axis powers are wrong for so many reasons, but it is especially misleading in this case. There is something quite jarring about a comparison that likens one country’s development of a nuclear program to provocative acts or acts of international aggression (i.e., Germany reoccupying the Rhineland, Italy invading Ethiopia), and then calls on another state to commit an act of international aggression to “respond” to a threat that doesn’t currently exist. Let’s hope that Iranian leaders aren’t taking these examples to heart, since they would conclude that they must not seek to “appease” the more powerful states threatening them with attack and decide to rule out any negotiated settlement of the nuclear issue.

It is possible that Iran’s leaders, including Khamenei, are willing to consider a deal with the U.S. on the nuclear issue. If that possible opening is disregarded and squandered by increasing threats against Iran, it makes it that much more likely that Iran’s government will conclude that Western governments have never been interested in reaching an agreement and will never accept one. Dismissing Iranian gestures out of hand, as Netanyahu has been doing, will give Iran reason to assume that a diplomatic solution is impossible. That in turn would make conflict more likely, and that wouldn’t be in the interests of any of the countries involved.

One reason that Israel likely won’t attack Iran is that it wouldn’t benefit Israel very much to do so. At most, an Israeli attack could set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few years, but the international fallout from such an attack would last longer and would cost Israel more than it could have possibly gained through military action. An attack would make a negotiated settlement impossible, and it would make Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon more likely.

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28 Responses to Israel Wouldn’t Benefit from Attacking Iran

The surprising thing is that Iran doesnt have nukes yet. If they were led by Machiavelli, they would propably have.
There is no shortage of Iranians that regards the US gouverment not as the devil (thats Israel, hostile but predictable) but as Chtullu (hostile, uncomprehensible, powerfull).

Here is some food for thought: The US has the coventional weapons to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program. Israel does not have these conventional weapons. What if the US refuses to use these weapons?

According to Fortress Israel by New York Times foreign correspondent Patrick Tyler, page 410:
“To add water to Netanyahu’s ship, the (Israeli) generals whispered to the news media examples of his recklessness… There were rumors that Netanyahu had made intemperate comments in private about employing Israel’s nuclear arsenal against Syria during a period of tensions.”

page 164, regarding the Six Day War:
“…(Levi) Eshkol had been persuaded by the small group of experts that Israel should prepare the option of exploding a nuclear device within sight of the Egyptian forces as the ultimate deterrent against attack. A so-called demonstration shot could also be fired to stop an Arab army that had already broken through Israel’s defenses.”

By the time the french were at long last sent packing from the Rhineland “Uncle Joe” had already accomplished the holodomor – at about one and a quarter times the number of victims of the holocaust by Stalin-friendly estimates.
The one reason Dshugashwili will forever be Uncle Joe while the other one will be remembered in well deserved infamy is quite clear, isn’t it?

There is only one way Israel will militarily attack Iran, given that Iran, geographically & by population, dwarfs Israel: Israel is convinced the U. S. will follow-up any Israeli military attack against Iran with a full-spectrum bombing campaign and anything deemed necessary, including “boots on the ground” or tactical nukes, to see Israel protected from a retaliatory, defensive, military response.

Solution:

Israel must be convinced no such U. S. military follow-up will be forthcoming upon an act of aggression by Israel against Iran.

Kristol head must be exploding! The President does not bomb Syria, and the leaders of Iran and US are sending letters to each other. (I am not sure what is the big deal about leaders having someone else write letters for them.) Israel must act now!

Israel might not, but how about Israelis, depending on how broadly you define benefit. Certain elements would definitely derive ideological satisfaction from an attack, and, for many of them, that’s enough of a benefit.

Let’s not forget the low grade war already going on between Israel and Iran. Israel assasinates Iranian nuclear scientists, and in conjunction with the US unleashes a computer virus upon Iran’s network. Iran uses proxy armies in Hamas and Hezbollah and props up Syria to keep the Jewish state occupied. Frankly, Netanyahu allegedly gave away his prime concern that a nuclear armed Iran would enable Palestinians to resist further Israel land grabs. Kristol is merely pushing the “Greater Israel” fantasy.

“What could be scarier to Netanyahu than Iran getting nukes? The prospect of Iran abandoning nukes, negotiating an end to the sanctions, opening itself up to the world.”

Here’s Two:

1) Iran abandoning nukes on condition that Israel also abandon’s nukes and submits to inspection;
2) When Abbas shows up at the United Nations and demands not a two state solution but a one state solution with one vote for all.

Israel must be convinced no such U. S. military follow-up will be forthcoming upon an act of aggression by Israel against Iran.

The precedents here are mixed. The US did not follow up Israel’s bombing of Hussein’s Osirak in 1981, partly because Hussein was our counterweight to Iran and partly because the Israeli strike was conclusive.

Then again, the same president of that time just a year later intervened in Lebanon as a supplement Israel’s incursion therein so as to neutralize the Palestinian and Lebanese Shiite elements dangerous to Israel, something Israel could not achieve alone (and indeed which America could not achieve, at least at a price Americans were willing to pay at the time).

America expedited missile shipments to Israel in response to Israel’s aggression in the 2006 Lebanon War, but did not intervene with our own forces.

America did not follow up Israel’s strike on Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007 because, as with Osirak, the Israeli action was conclusive.

I just don’t see how Israel can conduct a strike on Iran without American assistance beforehand, forget about a follow-up afterwards. Israeli aircraft would have to travel a long distance (likely requiring refueling) through hostile airspace. The Persian Gulf is thick with American and Iranian (not to mention international civilian) vessels, if Israel wished to try some sort of naval approach. Iran’s nuclear sites, to the extent that they are all known (a question of intelligence), are dispersed, secure, and sometimes near dense population centers. Unlike 1981 and 2007, any Israeli operation is almost certain to be inconclusive, and then Israel will have to roll out its big guns — its army of partisans in Washington, that is, not any element of its official armed forces — to make sure the job gets done.

All of these Middle East tensions distract from the issue that Israel wants to bury: The status of the Palestinians and Israel’s “settlers”. Israel has lost Eurpoean opinion on this and will lose American opinion if the situation continues

Kristol’s writings are aimed squarely at American policy makers and designed to guilt them into doing BiBis bidding. It is all along the line of “you wouldn’t want to be the kind of people who do nothing while the World puts the Jews through a second holocaust now would you? Are you so heartless? What about the children!” Every day is Munich and we are called to kill the enemy of the day to save the World.
It is getting very old.

I think it is important to remember the Kritol family’s Trotskyist heritage. After Stalin confronted the reality of a non-productive communist state by instituting massive repression, Trotsky went on pretending that you can have some ideal form of communism. Thus we see that breaking with political reality is the Kristol family trademark. Or, as Stalinists would say: “An idealist error”.

as a wise Israeli leader had once stated, we try to get along with our neighbors, if we can’t we will destroy them.
and may I add,if we can’t get along, we buy them and let our rich uncle Sam pay for it.

Andrew: From the Jerusalem Post on the European Union’s ban on goods from Israeli settlements.

European “opinion” and trade sanctions are two very different things–I was responding to the issue of public opinion. What does EU bureaucracy do is of no concern to me, why-is a separate issue. The dynamics of the European attitudes, not of Euro-media, or of the left-wing academia, towards Israel and anti-Islamic sentiment, which is gaining momentum, are very intricately connected. F.e. some European right wing parties even provide some security measures to Jewish schools and Synagogues since recently. I hope I made this distinction clear.